Mike the Usurper wrote:

Decius wrote:

Mike the Usurper wrote:
I don't think you're going to get the "values conservatives" moving over to the Democratic Party, the party doesn't agree with their values, and doesn't want them.

Wanna bet?

I stand by the earlier comment. The American Baptist church is evangelical, and has been largely aligned with the Democratic Party from the beginning. The mistake is thinking of all evangelicals as values conservatives. They frequently are, but just as all apples are fruit, not all fruit are apples.

This section of the thread mostly says to me that you all have a different view of "values conservatives". And I'm with Mike in the sense that the people I see as "values conservatives" are the ones with the values of "defending marriage", halting stem cell research, illegalizing abortion, etc. etc. They're the morality police contingent.

I know it's true that there are Christians, evangelical or otherwise, that support the same values that I do. I was raised as one of them. The problem is that the pretenders to Christianity -- and I do think of them that way, as false Christians who don't deserve the name -- have overtaken if not the soul of the movement, then at least the reins of power and the microphones. Perhaps the media is largely to blame; i've already noted the harm it does by requiring everything to be a big, extreme, polarized battle. And I suppose I could blame myself a bit since I (and people like me) have distanced themselves from the religion so as to not get lumped in with the idiots you hear most about these days. I won't be seen in that light, so i simply stopped identifying as a Christian.

I've always thought, predictably, that true Christian values identify most with a Democrat platform. I'm open to changing my mind, but I've never been convinced that you can square the actual teachings of Jesus with the actual priorities of the Republican party. In that sense, the Dems have been bad at convincing people of this. The linked article is gratifying in that it seems like at least Dean and the DNC are opening up, but there's a lot of sentiment in this country that Dems are anti-religion in a foundational sense. It's going to be hard to change that view. I hope that it's going that way.

RE: Republican Presidential Candiates on Torture